As I listen to the rain outside my window this morning, I’m excited. Why should I be excited about rain when it’s been such gorgeous weather lately? Because April showers bring May flowers…or in my case a May garden!

Every year, usually in January—because, yes, I am that impatient—I end up creating a plan for that summer’s garden. What will I want to eat all summer? What do I want to preserve for winter? I have space and sunlight limitations in my garden, so what would be the perfect mix to plant?

Well, being the Type A personality I am, I enjoy making Excel spreadsheets for all fun things in my life. So, yes, creating a garden strategy excites me each year.

But if I didn’t actually act on said plan, I would have to rely on subpar veggies all summer. So I create action items. In February, I choose all my seeds. In March, I set up my indoor mini-greenhouse and start my seedlings. On good weather days in April, I bolster my garden boxes, build any new boxes that might be needed, and make sure the soil is weeded and ready. Come May, I’m ready to plant.

Okay, so this is more about my garden than you ever wanted to know. What’s the point, right?

The point is that without a strategy, my garden wouldn’t produce as I would like. My tomatoes might not have enough sun to grow, or my beans could be planted next to my onions, and neither would grow as well.

Many small businesses either think that a marketing strategy is a waste of time or that it costs too much, but they’re not considering the increase in their marketing effectiveness. Without a plan, they may be spending too much money on tactics that don’t work, or they could be focusing so broadly that they’re having less-than-desirable return on investment.

Of course, the flip side of planning out my garden is that without taking action on my strategy, I might not have any vegetables at all. My boxes might fall apart because the brackets were loose. Or my seedlings might not be ready in time for May planting, which would mean a late harvest.

Alternatively, when a business does have a marketing strategy, it can be easy to let the actual action items fall to the wayside in favor of doing billable work. This is an understandable challenge. Then again, without marketing of some sort, your billable work will eventually dry up. And if you’re reacting instead of planning and responding, your marketing is going to be much less effective.

Successful marketing is a two-part process. The first is to figure out how to market smartly. The second is to do it.

It’s an older article, but I think it’s relevant and interesting. Suggestions in the article included becoming an expert (primarily through social media content), cultivating superusers (in other words, focusing on and encouraging existing fans), ensuring people can find you (i.e, making sure google maps knows where you are), and offering ad-funded payment options.

I thought the article was interesting but that it missed a few opportunities for free marketing. Here are some ideas that I would have added to the article:

Find speaking opportunities to increase your visibility as an industry expert. For example, are there professional organizations in your area that provide an outlet for you to speak about your subject area? If you provide in-home health care for senior citizens, maybe you could offer workshops for adult children of senior citizens and hold them at various senior centers.

Find in-kind sponsorship opportunities in your clients’ professional organizations. For example, if you sell promotional marketing materials, and you know that marketers make up a portion of your target market, try offering free promotional materials to a marketing professional organization in return for free advertising in their publications and at their events.

You don’t have to spend a fortune on your marketing, but you do have to have a clear strategy of who you’re reaching out to, what your message is, and what methods of marketing work best for your company, your audience, and your specific brand.

What are some free (or at least inexpensive) marketing ideas you’ve had success with?

I sometimes feel like I could sum up all of my answers and guidance to friends, family, colleagues, clients, and prospective clients with five magic words: “It depends on your audience.”

Frequently, I get asked by friends or colleagues—fellow business owners—should I advertise at this bus stop or try doing Groupon? Would social media work for my specific business or would it be a waste of my time? Should I bother spending money on a professional graphic designer when my nephew’s best friend’s cousin offered to make me a brochure for free?

My answer to those questions is almost always the same.

There’s a reason why the very first step in creating a marketing strategy is defining your target market. Until you know who you are trying to sell your product or service to, your marketing efforts are limited to the “I think I shoulds” or “Maybe this will works.” Once you have an audience in mind, and you can more specifically narrow down their Internet habits (Twitter vs. Facebook?), reading habits (5280 Magazine or the Denver Post?), or their day-to-day activities (wine-tasting galas or after-school sports?), you can better focus your marketing efforts and they will be more successful.

Should you advertise at that bus stop? If your audience is primarily dependent on public transit, quite possibly! If they’re more the BMW type, maybe not so much.

Which brings us back to the very base of every marketing strategy: “It depends on your audience.”

I went to a Social Media Marketing Club meeting last week that gave me an interesting statistic. According to Hubspot, companies with blogs have 55% more visitors to their websites than companies without. That’s a pretty huge number!

Because so much of a company’s SEO (search engine optimization…or what makes your website come to the top of the list in a Web search) depends on the content of your site and how many links come back to your site, it actually makes a lot of sense. Blogs tend to use your keywords repeatedly and can be linked to externally from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, email, and a variety of other sources. But most importantly, blogging enables you to market yourself as an expert in the industry you serve.

What a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors!

However, it took me four months of stalling before I actually started writing in my blog, even though I know exactly how important blogging is for strategic marketing. Why the long wait? Because it took me that long to come up with ideas for topics that would interest my clients and prospective clients while still providing a new perspective on topics that may have already been blogged to death. Blogging can only be an effective marketing tool if you use it to say something unique or interesting.

Here are some tips that helped me develop blog content and get the ball rolling, so to speak:

Create a list of potential blog topics. Your ideas may be as simple as “something about finding a green printing company” or more detailed with a specific outline. But creating this list means you don’t have to stare at a blank screen every time you sit down to write.

Write multiple blog posts ahead of time, if you’re on a roll. When you are on a good writing kick, and the creative juices are flowing, just keep writing. Most blogging sites let you write blog entries and schedule them to post at a future time.

Set up a blog schedule. A blog schedule holds you accountable to consistent blogging. If you only blog once every three months or are inconsistent, your audience may lose interest.

Search for interesting articles on the Internet. If you’re having a hard time coming up with ideas, it’s usually fairly easy to find an interesting article to respond to. Avoid exact repetition, but opinions or additional discussion can lead to interesting posts.

So I have created a list of blogging ideas and a blogging calendar for the first few months of 2011. Now I just need to get writing. A networking colleague and I decided to set aside some time to sit and do nothing but write blog posts. Nothing like learning to walk the walk!

My spouse once compared me to a force of nature because when I decide to do something, whether it’s start a new project for a client or plan a family vacation, I move forward at full speed. What can I say? I’m an energetic person who’s not very good at sitting still. When a friend of mine commented earlier this week on the fact that I was so productive and organized (her words, not mine), I laughed and told her it’s because I’m hyper and don’t sleep.

I was joking, but actually, there’s a relevant marketing point in that. When I started my company, I had no plan in mind. While I knew I wanted to start my own business at some point in the future, getting laid off this year pushed my “someday” plans to the forefront. All of a sudden, I needed to start considering my own branding strategy. One of the key points I always discuss with my clients is to make sure that their brand reflects who they really are.

What does that mean?

A company’s brand should incorporate their culture, their values, and their differentiating factors. What sets them apart? What makes them who they are? What is it about that particular company that is different from every Tom, Dick, and Harry down the road who offers similar services?

For me, as a business owner and as a person, one of the characteristics that people tend to notice pretty quickly is that I’m very high energy. I talk a lot, I’m animated, and I don’t sit still often. I am organized and love creating order from chaos, but once that’s done I honestly expect to move forward. I don’t want to create a pretty outline…and then just stick that outline on a cork board and ignore it. If you don’t take action, that pretty outline is useless. What brings successful results (and profit!) to a company is using that outline to light a fire of activity.

As I started the branding process for my own business, I practiced what I preached to my clients and focused on what makes me different. After a ton of bouncing back and forth with ideas, I settled on Energine—a cross between energy and imagine—something that really speaks to both my personality and my value as a company. I didn’t want my company to provide a marketing strategy that would sit, collecting dust on someone’s desk. I wanted Energine to provide workable solutions for my client’s challenges. Hence the next part of my tag line: creative solutions in action. Not just a document, but a plan that my clients and I could move on and work with to create success.

So here’s the question for the day: what characteristics define your company? When you say your company’s name, what key words pop into your head that are specific to the personality of your company?

Upcoming Events

There are no upcoming events at this time.

Newsletter Signup

Email Address

First Name

Last Name

Testimonials

“What helpful and informative information for our business and it's growth. The classes were well thought out, presented with great professionalism and poise. We took away a lot of information and look forward to our growth in marketing. Thank you from Denver Counseling Options.”